


Polite Exterior, Bestial Interior

by bakedpotatocat



Category: Homestuck, Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Also Regular Lust, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Being Horny on Main, Big Girls & Bigger Swords, Bloodlust, Everyones a Little Rougher Around The Edges, F/F, Falling In Love, Giant Beasts, Sword lesbians, Vaguely Parallels The Meteor, monster hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedpotatocat/pseuds/bakedpotatocat
Summary: Rose is a huntress assigned to the desk job of Guildmarm while recovering from a frenzy sickness inflicted in the field. Her team broken apart and her job as field researcher put on hold, she mostly spends the days waiting until the medics at HQ can find an antidote to the rare disease.There is, however, an upside to having new hunters in town. One Kanaya Maryam, in particular, manages to catch her eye.Rated M for Rose being horny.
Relationships: Nepeta Leijon & Equius Zahhak (background), Rose Lalonde / Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Polite Exterior, Bestial Interior

A hulking behemoth of an armor-plated monster burst from the dry desert earth in front of the well-prepared hunter team, shaking earth from its back as it did. John drew its focus, wielding his great warhammer in large, swinging blows that crashed into the monster’s face, laughing heartily as the beast stumbled from the shock. Jade, set up in a firing blind from a nearby cliff, hammered the carapaced monster’s side with her bowgun, knocking it further and further off balance, and Dave danced at the edge of the monster’s reach, his long blade slicing swathes of flesh off the bipedal giant’s legs and tail. Rose waited at the edge and watched, her short blades humming with frenzied energy harvested from the scales of the newest and most dangerous enemy they had faced. She waited, patiently, as Jade loaded one of her largest munitions and John stepped back, gathering inertia in great hulking swings of his hammer. Dave took point and distracted the beast as Rose started her run forward, knowing the moment of attack was coming, and in a flurry of movement Jade staggered the beast with a massive explosion to the head as John finished twirling his hammer and let the hit strike home. And Rose was cackling, excited, delighted to finally take her place, running up the behemoth’s tail as it fell to one knee, dashing forward and plunging her blades into eyes the size of dinner plates, screaming bloody murder as she rode the beast like a bronco. Dave smirked as he went to town on the tail, but in the corner of her eye she thought John and Jade looked concerned, catching their breath and waiting for the next opening. It was okay to enjoy hunting, wasn’t it? Not everyone did it for the glory or the cash. Her concentration broke and the beast flung her from its head, and as she hit the ground, she realized she was faintly glowing a dark indigo purple, the same color as the frenzied beast they had killed the other week. In front of her, one cursed blade still stuck, glowing, in the mud monster's bleeding eye. Rose stood to her feet, adrenaline surging through her veins, and yelled something she knew was unintelligible, swearing at the beast in some foreign - 

A polite knock on the desk woke Rose from her impromptu dream-memory. Ah yes, her job. She’d been reassigned to questgiving after the… incident. The guild was worried some sort of infection had taken root, the same frenzy virus that had plagued the monsters of the local area. It was a fucking travesty. She was the best field researcher in the area by far, and here she was, analyzing reports and sending newbie hunters on baby’s first jaggi kill. Her team had been broken apart in the aftermath, at least for the near future. John and Jade were reassigned to a far off outpost, and while Dave was in the area, he mostly only took on hunts the guild needed him for. In the team’s stead, there were some distant travelers sent as replacements from another part of the country, although they mostly operated solo. One of them, a tall, dark woman wielding a massive chainsaw-toothed blade, was staring at her now. 

  
Rose never said the desk job didn’t have its upsides, and this was one of them. 

  
God damn, the greatblade huntress Kanaya was easy on the eyes.

  
“Yes, Ms. Maryam, I do in fact have some hunts for you today – a number of fanged beasts harassing the usual trade routes, there’s a bounty out for wyvern eggs, as many as you can steal, and Equius has requested some more starmetal to line the forge, so it can smelt scales into dragonsteel. There are some more quests in the works, but aside from an expedition into the nearby ruins most of them recommend you work with a team.”

  
“I actually plan to take a day of rest after the big hunt yesterday. I was going to inquire if you wanted to get lunch with me?”  
Rose’s heart skipped a beat. Kanaya had looked fucking delectable covered in the blood of the giant beetle-like beast she had gone out to hunt, her greatsword shining with green slime, armor battered from the acidic spray and showing quite a bit more bruised skin than usual. Of course, Kanaya wasn’t going out; she didn’t have her heavier armor on (if it had even been repaired yet) opting instead for the chainmail base most hunters started with. Rose stopped herself from smacking herself in the face in the light of her own stupidity. 

  
“I would love to join you, Ms. Maryam. Let me set out a sign letting the others know when I’ll be back.”

  
“Of course.”

  
The pair walked in a mostly-comfortable silence to the chef’s kitchen, where Nepeta headed up meals. A former huntress herself, her platonic life partner Equius had convinced her to take a more relaxed role. It didn’t hurt that she was a damn good cook, and she still found time to go out on… rare meat acquisition expeditions, if she was feeling coy. Equius didn’t like her hunting that much, particularly after the pair had been seriously injured by a sea beast, nearly drowning to death after being clubbed by a massive hoof.

Thankfully some other hunters had been in the area and pulled off a rescue.

  
Nepeta shot a hidden smile at Rose, waggling her eyebrows when Kanaya was turned around. Rose flipped her off in response. 

  
“What it’ll be, guild meowmbers? No grand hunt today, I’m assuming, so I don’t have to charge you for the special ingredients.”

  
“The usual, please, Nepeta. And keep it rare.”

  
“And you, my fellow retiree?”

  
“I’m not retired, I’m on sick leave. I fully intend on rejoining the action as soon as the guild clears it.”

  
Kanaya shot her a quizzical look. Apparently, word hadn’t quite gotten around.

  
“My apologies. What can I get you?” 

  
“My usual as well.”

  
“Comeowing right up!”

  
The pair sat at a secluded bench in a pocket of sunlight that filtered through the trees – Kanaya was from a part of the world that got a lot of sun and seemed to endlessly crave its kiss. 

  
It was yet another one on the endless list of things that attracted Rose to her. 

  
Kanaya finally spoke again, skin glowing in the early afternoon light. An acid shower did wonders to exfoliate given it didn’t get too deep. 

“I was originally going to ask what drew you to this line of work, but it seems I may have been mistaken about your history, although I would love for you to elucidate regardless.”

  
The vocabulary, the gentle lilt to her words, the impenetrable accent that refused to belie her exact tone or where she was from – for a split second, Rose wondered what else she could do with that silver tongue. She chased the thought out of her mind.

  
“Well, my mother was a hunter, and an extensive collector of the more esoteric monster lore. It was one of the few things we bonded over. I particularly enjoy studying the rarer beasts in their natural habitats. Well, I did. Unfortunately, one of those rarer beasts managed to pass on some sort of battle frenzy that makes me a danger to myself in the field, and no one has managed to synthesize an antidote yet.” 

  
“That’s a shame. I had heard such great things about the great researcher Rose Lalonde.”

  
“Well, I’m glad to know my reputation precedes me. If I may ask, how did you come to know my name?”

  
A faint blush dainted across the taller woman’s face.

  
“Your field manuals were a great boon to the fellow hunters from my village, and when I heard the area under the great Lalonde’s watch needed help, I asked the guild to be transferred.”

  
Rose smirked, leaning forward. “I quite like the sound of the ‘great Lalonde’, that’s a new one to me.”

  
Kanaya shifted in her seat, an anxious look across her face, rescued by the arrival of their food.

  
Nepeta slammed the plates down with a clatter, winking at Rose, who tried and failed to hide a scowl.

  
The seduction attempt wasn’t exactly going to plan, and Nepeta was an awful wingwoman. The cat was out of the bag, proverbially, and seemed to delight in derailing Rose’s attempts at flirting.

  
Kanaya starts tearing into a very rare steak, blood dripping from her teeth.

  
Is it wrong Rose found that a little attractive? Hunters tended to like dangerous partners, and that sword meant business. She picked at her own food, because while she normally loved Nepeta’s ramen, there were more pressing issues on her mind. What exactly did Kanaya want from her? Hopefully it was more than an autograph. While the huntress had always seemed reserved, there was a glint in her eyes when she returned from a hunt that Rose recognized in herself. Something raw, and bestial. Vengeful, perhaps. Rose had long pondered whether the psychology underlying hunters was something worth studying – perhaps in cases where the guild had to assign partners or scavenge together a team for a particularly dangerous hunt. Hunters needed to be compatible, both in fighting style and temperament, in order to find success in cooperative missions. What drove people to keep at such a dangerous career could be very valuable information indeed.

  
“If I may ask, what drove you to become a huntress?”

  
Kanaya wiped her mouth clean with a napkin. Rose made a note of the earnest politeness and the savagery lying just underneath the surface. The contrast was intoxicating. Dangerous women were attractive indeed.

  
“Necessity, at first. A great number of monsters began cropping up right as the guild was forced to call all available hunters to take out one of the great leviathans of the sand seas. People were terrified to leave the village, even for necessities like proper medicine. So one of my brothers in arms – Karkat Vantas, you may have met him, he came with me here – and I set out to fight our way to the nearest city in order to bring back some help. All we had were some old weapons left, and the wisdom of Karkat’s grandfather, a retired hunter known as the Sufferer, because of all the scars and injuries a life of guild work had left him. He was the one that recommended I find a field guide quote ‘memorable and worth a fucking damn’.”

  
“That’s quite an origin story, call to arms and all that.”   
“Yes, it is, isn’t it. We made it to the city, battered and bruised, but alive, and managed to request help on our way back through the desert. I developed a certain… taste, for combat, you could say, the adrenaline and feeling of cleaving a being stronger than you in twain. Karkat isn’t nearly as much for it, although he’s certainly competent. I think he sticks around mostly to make sure I don’t get myself killed.”

  
“I’m afraid most of my hunts are much more textbook and uninteresting stories than that, or you may have read them already. I write my manuals as grand stories so that other hunters bother to read, share and remember them. We’re a dreadfully illiterate bunch. I just hide all the stuff about weaknesses and blind spots in the midst of a hunting tale.”

  
“I think they’re quite good. Stories that is. Even better if they’re true.”

  
“They’re only a tad exaggerated. But then again, what hunting stories aren’t?”

  
Kanaya leans back in mock offense, gasping for effect.

  
“I only tell the truth, of course! What kind of brigand do you take me for?”

  
“Well then, Ms. Maryam, go on and regale the great Lalonde with the details of your hunt yesterday, and I shall be the judge of that.”

  
Kanaya rolled her eyes, but with a dramatic flair, began the story.

  
“I begin by tracking the beast down to a cliff face, where it eats from a crevice some fifty feet in the air…”

...

“And you finish the job by jumping, like some kind of madwoman, from a cliff and plunging your greatblade into it? Riding it as it dies midflight, sputtering to the ground like a bird winged by a gunbow?”

  
“Well of course! Why do you think I’ve been walking with a limp all day? I didn’t twist my ankle on the way back like some kind of imbecile!”

  
“That sounds like a sneakily suspicious denial of fact, Ms. Maryam.”

  
“Please, call me Kanaya.”

  
“In that case, you can call me Rose.”

  
“My pleasure.”

  
“I failed to notice your limp earlier, actually. Is it bothering you?”

  
“Only a little.”

  
“Well, go rest up. I’m afraid I must take my position at the guild’s desk once more, I’m sure the junior hunters are antsy to get the okay to go fish, or whatever they do on their expeditions.”

  
“Shall we meet again tomorrow?”

  
“I would quite like that.”

  
Kanaya excuses herself, and Rose spots a subtle blush once again coloring her cheeks as the tall woman exits, indeed walking with that slight limp she had brought up. Why didn’t she notice that? All the talk about being a great observer and yet one pretty girl walks in and her mind goes to… other places. Nepeta, noticing Rose lost in thought, puts a V up to her mouth with her fingers and sticks her tongue out, laughing in that “I know you like her” way of hers. Crude, of course. Not incorrect. Everything’s rougher, bigger and brasher with hunters. 

  
Rose takes off the arm-length glove hiding the purple-tinted skin of her forearm and hand and brandishes it at Nepeta, who just laughs. 

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a convo with jennadarck on the pgenpod discord! may or may not continue this with other one-shots. a lot of this draws from and parallels act 5 / act 6-I canon, with some subtle differences. I'm not quite sure I'm happy with Kanaya's character voice, though that may be just because I'm not using quirks. 
> 
> let me know what you think! monster hunter is one of my favorite games, this was an inevitability.


End file.
